What are serverless computing's[1] most enthusiastic users getting out of the technology, and how are they getting there? They appreciate the ability to implement event-driven architecture, and to support their API deployments. However, they wish serverless had more portability, and would like to have greater local control of features and debugging tools.

keyboard-photo-by-joe-mckendrick.jpg
Photo: Joe McKendrick

These are some of the takeaways from the current Serverless Community Survey[2], coordinated by the tireless Jeremy Daly[3], hosted and posted on the GitHub site. In serverless computing, all back-end work such as scaling, capacity planning and maintenance operations is handled in an automated fashion, typically by a public cloud provider, so, in theory, all a developer has to worry about is writing or integrating code for the business problem. Of course, one can argue that the term "serverless" is off, since there is always a server somewhere doing something, but that's another discussion.

By its very nature, this survey is conducted among a self-selected group of serverless proponents, so its focus is on trends and preferences among those already well-ensconced within the serverless world. Accordingly, when asked about the maturity of their serverless efforts, 40% of the 582 respondents indicate their maturity level was "high," that they are "all in on serverless." Another 22% report their embrace is "medium," that they are "transitioning to serverless."

Amazon Web Services emerges as the far-and-away front-runner in this space, cited by 72% as their public cloud computing choice. Microsoft Azure follows at 18%, and Google Cloud Platform with 13%. Accordingly, 61% report employing AWS Lambda[4] for Function as a Service[5], or FaaS, which, along with managed services, form the core of serverless. Another nine percent use Azure Functions[6]

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